IN the age of increasing divestments, another public sector unit (PSU) bites the dust. Come January 1 and Chhattisgarh will be the first state in the country to totally privatise its passenger road transport sector. Four hundred and fifty-five buses belonging to the State Transport Corporation (STC) will go off the road and private operators will take over.The State Transport Authority has already received about 300 applications for road permits. Among the applicants are 30-odd prominent transport companies, including Raipur-based Kanker Transport Company, a national permit-holder with 100 buses, Ashoka Transport, Mohindra and Dubey. ‘‘Commuters expect an affordable, safe and reliable transport service. Healthy competition is the best way to ensure this,’’ says Shailesh Pathak, MD of Chhattisgarh Infrastructure Development Corporation.Initially, the transport department proposes to issue temporary permits for 300 routes. ‘‘Later, we will invite applications for allotment of permanent route permits,’’ says R K Vij, additional commissioner, transport department.Two years after the formation of the state, this is the first time that the government has announced its plans for the transport sector. All these months, Chhattisgarh has been dependent on the MP State Roadways Transport Corporation. Under the States Reorganisation Act, the roadways corporation and its nearly 3,000 employees become Chhattisgarh’s responsibility on January 1, 2003.It was only after a cabinet sub-committee meeting headed by Finance Minister Ram Chandra Singh Deo recently that it became apparent that the government wanted to keep the field open for private players. ‘‘Road transport corporations are a drain on state exchequers,’’ Singh Deo told The Sunday Express. ‘‘We have made a conscious decision to keep away from activities that can be better performed by the private sector.’’Few can deny, though, that the private sector is driven largely by the profit motive. Simultaneously, transporters themselves admit that political patronage, more than any other factor, will decide the route allotments; some favoured ones, in fact, have already started plying their buses on chosen routes in anticipation of clearances.‘‘There is little room for fair play. It’s either cash or connection that will make the mare go,’’ says a Bilaspur transporter on condition of anonymity.Commuters have their own fears, one being the monopolisation of the transport sector by transport lobbies. MPSRTC employees, too, are agitated by the government decision. ‘‘There’s still time to reverse the decision, which will serve the interests of neither commuters nor the government. The only beneficiaries will be the private sector and the more unscrupulous bus operators,’’ says Abdul Hakim, convener of the action committee formed by six transport unions.Among the alternatives they have proposed is allowing a cooperative of transport employees to run the services. They have also sought protection of MPSRTC employees’ jobs. Neither proposal was approved.
